More on The Wire

So I did my close reading and I think We got a pretty good episode to analyze as it has one of my favorite scenes in it but I will talk about it tomorrow. So I don't really know what else to say about the show other than what we are presenting tomorrow so I turn to my good friend google and I found this article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2149566/

And here are a couple of good points that I think cover The Wire quite nicely.

"Its protagonist is the broken American city of Baltimore, depicted with obsessive verisimilitude and affectionate rage. Its fundamental concern is the isolation and degradation of the black underclass, a subject that has, with the exception of a blip after Hurricane Katrina, disappeared from the political radar screen. If the national conscience is ready for another sleepless night about the waste of lives in the ghetto, I expect that The Wire will be what keeps us awake....

Several critics have commented on The Wire's "literary" quality. In particular, The Wire has echoes of the Victorian social panorama of Charles Dickens (who gets a mention this season, as an obscene anatomical reference). The drama repeatedly cuts from the top of Baltimore's social structure to its bottom, from political fund-raisers in the white suburbs to the subterranean squat of a homeless junkie. As with Dickens, the excitement builds as the densely woven plot unfolds in addicting installments. The deeper connection to Dickens' London is the program's animating fury at the way a society robs children of their childhood. In our civilized age, we do not send 12-year-olds to work in blacking factories as the Victorians did. Today's David Copperfield is instead warehoused at a dysfunctional school until he's ready to sling drugs on the corner, where his odds of survival are even slimmer."

I thought this Dickens analogy was interesting to apply to The Wire and I am interested how the other seasons play out and how they fit with Dickens and the Greek tragedies that Simon was so fond of recreating. Also this article made me think of Lolita and Humbert's realization that he stole her childhood from her and this loss of innocence seems to be a major theme in the 4th season of the show.